


let me show you a few things

by quentintarrantino



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Dancing, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:41:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quentintarrantino/pseuds/quentintarrantino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann hates this. He hates everything about it, the music, the people, the fact that strangers are touching him and he wishes he could slink back and let the wall absorb him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let me show you a few things

**Author's Note:**

> one day I'll write a quality fanfic today is not that day.

Hermann hates this. He hates everything about it, the music, the people, the fact that strangers are touching him and he wishes he could slink back and let the wall absorb him.

The beat is throbbing throughout the whole club and the mathematician can feel his cane vibrate, the group is around him, he wiggled his way into the middle to try and obstruct the flow of people he didn’t know brushing against him but it’s not working like he had hoped. He is going to kill Newton as soon as they stop and he can get his hands around his neck properly, _It’s the weekend!_ He had gushed, sudden nostalgia for his days at MIT bubbling up and mystifying Hermann. His lab partner had started chattering to everyone who came to the lab how they needed to go out and get good and drunk, Tendo had agreed heartily and despite Hermann’s best attempts to feign illness or maybe even his own death to avoid being dragged along he had gotten roped into it somehow and here he was.

Women leered at him with their drinks in hand as red lights coupled with striking strobes of white illuminated everyone’s faces in strange hues, making Hermann’s body bend away from them so they didn’t touch him, their long lashes batting and calling after him while he thanked the universe that the club was dim enough for no one to notice the pink in his cheeks. Mako was next to him, looking rather festive and wearing a dress that Hermann was sure Stacker didn’t know she owned, Raleigh was next to her, his eyes plastered to her face as her talked to her loudly, barely audible over the steady pounding of the music. Her hair was streaked with blue and her elbows bumped against the doctor’s ever so often but he wasn’t so worried about her, Tendo was to his right, a beer already cracked open but he wasn’t sure how he managed to get his hands on it. Newt headed the herd, weaving between the bodies with ease, seemingly at home in the masses, the tiles on the floor cycled through colors and the white of his clean shirt was drenched in whatever was underfoot.

Hermann was wearing the standard sweater vest, he didn’t own clubbing clothes because aside from once when he was seventeen he had never been inside a club. It was filled with potential to transmit viruses and fluids of all kinds and he wanted no part of it yet here he was, feeling hands pull on his clothes like damned souls attempting to drag him down to the hell that was music from the early 2000s. He was definitely going to kill Newt, maybe twice just to make this trip worth the trouble.

The booths are sticky, his disdain grows considerably as he feels the palm of his hand come away slick with some mystery liquid when he lays his hand on the table and Tendo is laughing, telling everyone how displeased Hermann looks and the only answer he receives is a deeper scowl that makes even Mako crack a smile and she tries her best not to laugh when people poke fun at him. Raleigh slides in next to him and Tendo takes the end, Newt’s already gone and the two jaeger pilots are sitting incredibly close. Hermann feels old.

The song changes again and the lights pick up a new pattern, zigzagging across the room to shed light on the gyrating bodies too close for comfort and with his eyes adjusting to the blindingly uncomfortable strobes he scans the crowds. Waitresses have arrived with alcohol he didn’t remember ordering but drinks are placed in front of him with Tendo winking and saying that he’ll enjoy himself much more when he’s drunk but Hermann very much doubts it. But for all his sour ways he is German and can take comfort in a good brew, sipping at it with his cane in between his knees under the table he can survey from over the top of the tall glass. The notion that people willingly came here to grind away their stresses was a mystery that no equation he could write would solve. Tendo was twisting his wedding ring on his finger and looking longingly at nothing in particular as if he is dredging up achingly happy memories of the woman waiting for him at home, he makes eye contact with Hermann again and a smile goes back on his face, leaning over to clink his glass against the mathematician’s before throwing it back in a few gulps and leaving the safe haven that was their booth to force his way between the people in search of Newton.

Mako and Raleigh follow suit after a few more minutes and once they have both ingested enough alcohol to loosen them up, Mako looks at him sulking as if she wants to try to persuade him out onto the floor but it looks useless and she gives up before she even tries which seems out of character for her or maybe that’s just how concrete Hermann looks in his effort not to be happy while here. They linger on the outskirts and his eyes trail to where their hips swish and sway to the deafeningly loud sounds and after a few beats hands begin to wander and Hermann is taken aback by the way things escalate, averting his gaze as though he’s looking in on something not meant to be seen despite the crowded area that they’re packed into.

Instead he tries to scan for Tendo, he would be the easiest to spot with his bowtie and after a few moments he does indeed see him, not bothering to look as though he knows what he’s doing while he thrashes on the floor, a stupid smile plastered to his face that Hermann doesn’t understand and loathes because everyone is delighted to be here and he partially wonders if they are savoring making him so miserable but he ultimately decides that maybe this is just a thing normal people his age did and they’re trying to get him to join in the human experience. He would sooner assist Newton with his Kaiju dissections.

His beer glass is empty, he frowns at it and wishes more than anything he was back in his room at Shatterdome.

People are making noise, more so than they already were and this diverts his attention, his expression letting up in interest while people leave a little bubble in the middle of the floor and he can’t see what’s going on. Mako and Raleigh are pressed so close together in their little spot Hermann wonders if their skin has joined together at the hip and they are incapable of separating, he’s seen stranger things happen and wouldn’t be surprised at the rate they’re rubbing together like hormonal teenagers. He feels extra old now.

The crowd is rippling as it shifts positions and bodies are being jostled around, Hermann is debating just slipping out but there’s no way he’d make it through all those people without being spotted by any one of those he arrived with, and on top of that the idea of so many touching him is enough to make him weak. He can sit in the safety of the booth and fantasize about all the ways he’s going to kill Newton.

Newton.

By god there he is, Hermann almost passed him up when he was watching all those strangers humping each other like animals, but he’s unmistakably there, his shirt rolled up haphazardly at the elbows and the black lights that were alternating set the white of the fabric aglow, a brilliant little source of light in the sea of dark. His head is thrown back and his body is moving in a way that Hermann’s never seen, his arms moving and he doesn’t quite look like he knows what he’s doing either but he’s having the time of his life. Sweat glistens on his forehead and his lips are slightly parted and something about the abandon on his features is enough to make something pleasant curl in the base of Hermann’s stomach and he’s horrified by it, his lab partner is seizing on a dance floor and his anatomy is reacting most inappropriately. Maybe this means he should stop drinking.

Maybe this means he should start drinking more.

By the time people start coming back to the booth to check in on him and say hello he’s got quite an assortment of bottles and glasses strewn around, as he reasoned he would stop drinking when he became drunk enough to stop trying to sort Newt out of the crowd. Tendo tells him that he should get out there and even a hammered version of Hermann knows that this is the last place he wants to be, he slurs out some kind of sharp retort and he jumbles it up but his razor sharp tongue still gets the message across. He accosts Mako when she drifts back to him as well, telling her that the Marshall would be appalled and she has the decency to look down at her feet while Raleigh’s eyebrows shoot up, more surprised that Hermann became even more of a grump when drunk then the fact that he was trying to lecture his copilot into behaving accordingly.

He’s been cut off by the bar when Newt comes to sit down, his chest heaving like he’s run a marathon, his hair tousled like his dancing partners have been running their hands through it and Hermann wants to lecture him too like he did to Mako but instead he just tries to focus all his energy into not getting a headache from the music. He’s not succeeding.

“Dude!” Newt shouts over the tunes blaring obnoxiously loud. “It’s great out there you need to check it out!”

“I don’t dance.” He snarls. “And you shouldn’t either you look rrrrrrrridiculous!” R’s rolling like thunder he juts his chin out and Newton smiles widely at him, eyebrows wiggling like it wasn’t an insult and more of an inside joke. Hermann’s not drunk enough for this conversation.

“Take the stick out of your ass for one night man!” Hermann’s about to accost him and say something rather rude his sober self wouldn’t utter out loud (that’s how bad it is, there’s very little he won’t hold over Newt’s head) when a warm hand closes over his wrist and Newton’s too close. “I’ll show you.” His breath smells like what he imagines his own does, he didn’t remember seeing him consume a single drop however.

Hermann tries to jerk his arm out of his grip but the fire is gone and he hesitates, hoping that no one he knows is seeing how close the two are. “I don’t dance.” He repeats firmly but Newt’s trying to drag him out of the booth by then and he is smacking him with his cane but it’s too late and Hermann blames the fact that he often smacks him with his cane and he’s developed a tolerance. He makes a mental note to stop so it hurts more when he decides to use it as a weapon.

Tendo spots them a ways away and whoops, his voice drowned in the noise and bodies are touching him all over and he feels like he’s going to throw up but he swallows thickly and tries instead to fight Newt as hard as he can to get off the floor and back to the safety of the booth but he’s too drunk and once more the scientist is close and the song’s changed as the energy mounts to a near frantic pace and on top of feeling like an idiot he has to deal with the fact that Newt’s own body apparently has a mind of its own and is getting carried away by the music. “It’s easy.” His mouth is so close to him that he doesn’t have to shout and Herman holds out hope that maybe he’s hallucinating due to the stress of being stuck in one place with so many people but he watches Newton’s hips jerk in time to the song and he knows this is not what he’s vainly hoping it to be. “Try it.” His lab mate urges, stepping back to continue with whatever conniption fit he was beginning to throw.

Hermann’s hands tighten around his cane, he can’t dance, it’s a physical impossibility, he can no more dance than he can fly and still Newton’s watching him as though he expects him to throw all his inhibitions out the window and throw his cane down to begin the jive or something equally preposterous. His cheeks are on fire and he hates it, bristling as someone in passing trails their hands against his back and he yanks his body away from the offending fingers, knocking into his partner and Newt takes it as a first move towards dancing and from there it all goes to hell.

“Get off me!” he spits and Newton pulls a hands up gesture to show surrender. “I don’t dance, I cannot dance you insufferable idiot what part of that don’t you understand!” he’s being pushed and pulled on and when the next of the Kaiju surface he’s praying that this godforsaken club is destroyed.

Newton doesn’t seem bothered at all by this he wonders if he’s been struck over the head recently by a blunt object and is as consequence suffering from a concussion. It’s perfectly likely but instead he invades his personal space again and his murmuring is gentle as he feels his hands close on the fabric of his sweater and tug him in closer “I’ll show you.” He repeats, the crowd has become more dense and while none of them are moving their bodies are being jostled in time with the music and Newt’s stupid drunk smile comes back like he’s been planning this the whole night. “Just follow my lead.”

“Famous last words.” Is all Hermann can think to retort but by then it’s too late and in the ocean of skin and sweat Newt loosens his grip and begins to move like he had seen him earlier, hips gyrating obscenely and what could’ve been a breathy laugh escaping his lips. Hermann is embarrassed enough for the both of them but it seems no one is paying him any mind and he clenches tighter against his cane but Newton isn’t letting him go, his eyes are pleading with him behind lenses to just play along.

It’s got to be the alcohol, at least that’s what he’s going to blame it on years from now when this story is rehashed fondly because his hips move too, just an inch but it’s enough and Newton beams at him bright enough for the strobes passing overhead to dim in comparison. Hands that are much smaller than his are closing around his sweater again and he wants to complain that it’s going to stretch it out but people are still coming onto the floor, sandwiching them all together and there’s a lot less space to use as a barrier. Their bodies are pressed against one another and Newton looks like he’s back in the lab bent on making a breakthrough because he shifts his hips a little to the left and the feeling that they make when they drag across each other is enough to make Hermann want to run away other people touching him be damned. It’s heaven and hell and he never asked for this he wanted to spend the night in his room reading scientific journals but somehow he’s here and he’s drunk and so he might as well make the best of it because it seems Newt’s got his claws sunk in and isn’t going to let him go anytime soon. The horrified expression on his face slides off to be replaced with that of a challenge and then it’s no longer about how he doesn’t dance it’s about Newt winning and how he can’t let it happen.

The beat is fast and getting in sync is must more difficult than he anticipated but he can manage, the lights switch up and suddenly it’s very bright as people holler and scream and make enough noise to bring the roof down along with the deafening tones being pumped through these speakers. He can see the green and gray blots in Newton’s eyes as they widen from the feeling of his grinding being returned and then the room goes dark just as quickly as it had lit up but the music doesn’t stop and maybe surrounded by the pitch blackness it’s what they need because Hermann feels Newt’s hands firm against his hips and they’re flush against each other with very little effort.

The friction makes him hard, but the minute he tries to wriggle away to avoid Newt catching on the grip tightens and he has to finish what he’s started. Their breathing is loud in the small space they’ve been confined to, like sex with their clothes on and he suddenly feels bad for saying what he did to Mako because it’s obvious now the appeal when Newton hits a sweet spot and the scientist whines a certain way and Hermann’s skin erupts in goosebumps. The mathematician pulls his head back a bit and grabs hold of Newt’s chin, forcing him to look up and acknowledge the height difference when the lights pick up again and they’re bathed in red, hips still pressed firmly together and Newton rolls on the balls of his feet to mash their mouths together without thinking twice.

It’s more violent than anything else, they work against each other and their bodies don’t stop moving until his breathing picks up once more and he realizes that this is going somewhere he doesn’t want to explore on a dance floor in a club in Hong Kong. Newton’s panting, actually panting but not like he’s danced himself into exhaustion, like he’s going to explode and his voice is saying something but it can’t be heard over the music and Hermann wants to go sit back down because he just made out with his lab partner in the middle of a dance floor and his cock aches and he knows Newt’s does too, he can feel it against his too tight jeans and this is just too much for him to have to deal with at one time, almost unfair.

The song’s not even over yet, he feels like they’ve been at this for hours but it’s only been a few minutes and Newt’s talking again, he’s talking a lot about something, his mouth working excitedly and they stop moving briefly, looking at each other while his lips work the words out that are immediately drowned from the music. Hermann rolls his body in a move he didn’t know he had and it was worth it all just to see Newton shiver and stop talking, they’re both hard and he can feel hands navigating their way down to the bulge in his trousers and he swats them away, for as interesting as this new development is he draws the line at getting handjobs in a crowded nightclub drunk or sober. The hands flutter nervously before settling back in their original position and instead lips connect again but it’s different and slow and Hermann can definitely enjoy this, switching weight from the cane to his good leg so he can stand a bit on his own and wind his arms around Newt’s waist. They aren’t dancing anymore, just standing in one place and it’s maybe not as miserable as Hermann was initially led to believe, his partner whispers something in German, words slurred a bit and he laughs when the other man connects the dots as to what he’s trying to say and his face flushes so acutely that it’s visible even in the dark.

The song ends and another one begins in almost the same heartbeat, the crowd flexes and fluxes minus two, a hastily scribbled note left on the booth explaining the situation with a fistful of money to pay for the drinks.  


End file.
